Are any of you using digital portfolios this year? Several of our cluster schools started using them last year (for both teachers and students) and I'd be interested to hear if they've continued with them this year.
One of the workshops at the 2008 Learning@School Conference was about students using wikis for their digital portfolio. By using a wiki, the students are able to work on their portfolio at home and it can also be viewed by their parents and relatives wherever they are in the world. Powerfully motivating stuff! The L@S presentation was made on a Weebly website.
Click here to check out the workshop. There are links to examples of the student wikis.

An analogy can be made between being involved in a three year ICT Contract and with sponsoring a child through World Vision. When sponsoring a child, not only does the child benefit, but also his whole village. Similarly, an ICT cluster sets about developing and supporting teacher and student use of ICTs for learning and also their school’s awareness of the necessary environment for success. While an ICT cluster is certainly about developing individual teachers ICT skills and knowledge of 21Century best practice pedagogy, it is more importantly about developing each of its schools as a learning community.
The Wanganui ICT Cluster has ended it’s three year journey. The many days spent buying goats, planting crops and digging wells are over. Teachers have many new skills, strategies and understandings. Creative waters have start to flow. Hopefully their journey has planted the seeds for many future rich harvests and continued learning prosperity.

The Inquiry context for learning below are from Viscount School in Auckland. They will give you ideas when planning contexts for your own school.

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Here are a few photos taken in the 3 schools we visited in Palmerston North. Please add you own photos to a blog post as well.

Here are some websites for those of you who are keeping up with avalanche of ideas and environments on the Internet and want more!
Weebly
Very easy website making www.weebly.com
Voicethread
Uploading graphics, adding voice and getting audio comments from others www.voicethread.com This site is fantastic - there are so many ways you could use it with teachers and students.
Slide
Yet another photo slideshow website (good fun though!) www.slide.com
Blabberize
Make your photos talk! Your students will seriously love it! Get them to record a Christmas message. www.blabberize.com   Click the pink play button on the picture to listen to the alpaca.

Recently I was in Nelson for an ICT Cluster Regional Meeting. On the second day we went for a tour around three schools in the area - Brightwater, Ranzau , and Appleby. Click here to see some great photos of classroom environments.

What a great day.  It was really interesting to see the range of presentations.  I was so inspired that I want to try the same with the class.  It was a busy time trying to put together the presentation but with the support from Ian especially and the staff I was so happy with the final outcome.  Thankyou Lyn for your feedback.

Last Thursday I snuck into a Pam Hook and Julie Mills workshop at Coley Street School and learnt more about the SOLO Taxonomy. Pam and Julie are entertaining and informative presenters. Check out their inquire2learn wiki to learn more about thinking tools and strategies..

P.S. Check out Room 16's new Blog Page
www.wesixteen.blogspot.com

Recently at a gathering of new graduate teachers at my house. Despite the fact that these teachers still enjoyed working with children they were very despondent and disillusioned about the large amount of planning assessment and being locked into routine, content, and timetables.  These young teachers now look tired and have lost thier personal vibrance.  The reality of teaching is so different from what they thought it would be.

I have been teaching for 20 years and schools were always a fun place and filled with characters. We went out of our way to look for fun and entertainment and always involved the kids in this. Art lessons would dominate the day, drama could go on for hours, above all the children learnt the importance of humour.  Learning has become so serious!

And look at me now, I'm stuck on a computer, talking to people I cant see and dont know!!

HOW CAN WE MAKE SCHOOLS MORE FUN?

My extension group is fascinated by this book which shows detailed photos of families around the world with what they eat in a week and the cost. Check out the Time Magazine website for examples or borrow the book from the library. Refugees in Chad are given $1.23 of food for a week while others spend $70 on beverages but less on fruit and veges. To see the Time article and photos click here.

These two photos show the extremes.  The first picture shows Chad.  Compare this with Germany in the second.

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Its fun and exciting to add extra things to your blog! Your students will love doing it! For those of you who are getting into blogging using blogger.com, you might want to visit this blog which tells you how to get started and how to add extra things (widgets), like maps, clocks and polls etc. This blog provides step by step instructions. Click here to go there.
If your blog is with edublogs, you can also add widgets. In the admin area, click on 'Presentation' and then the 'Widgets' tab (top left). Drag a widgetbox onto the sidebar, click on the little lines and there is a video available to show you how to complete the next bit.
There are lots of places to find widgets. Widgetbox is one site and Susie Vesper has lots of links on her wiki.

I have added a new section to the left navigation bar.  It's called 'Thinking Skills and Strategies' and includes the  ''Developing a Thinking Toolbox' PowerPoint which was part of the workshop on thinking strategies which I presented in our ICT Cluster schools last year.  I have added this section to the website to give new teachers and those who missed this workshop a chance to view these resources and add to their professional learning. The 'Thinking Activity Plans' were completed by teachers during tutorials after the workshop.  These plans relate to classroom learning experiences and specific topics of study.

After a cluster workshop by Trevor Bond about questioning. I visited his website and re created his model to use with my Year 5/6 students.
The model requires the students to have knowledge of the Seven Servants using 7 levels of questioning. The levels are not ranked rather students are taught to use the most suitable question to gather relevant infomation required.
e.g. a level 3 question is just as effective as a level 7 question.

In order to teach the students, they needed to have an understanding of the jargon, e.g. contextual words/phrases/seven servants etc. Each child has a copy of the model in their Newsboard book and one is on permanent display in the classroom for frequent reference to.

The language was taught explicitly.

Using Harry Hood's Newsboard actitivity daily the students initially asked a range of questions relating to the topic. I then typed up each question onto a grid which was printed out. The students in pairs would then rate each question. As a class we then used the same questions enlarged. We would then discuss each using the language of questioning. This activitiy is repeated 2x per week and over the last 6 weeks and the understanding of questioning has developed as part of the children's psyche. They can tell me the difference between the level of questioning with confidence.

To see my re created model
Click Here

I have just set up my first class learning blog.  I added a "Flood" animation power point that students made during our inquiry into natural weather pheniomena. You can visit my blog here.
I see room 10 students putting  learning experiences and activities on this blog that we would like to share. We look forward to getting some comments about our work.

We have recently started our own blog. Our class, room 12 Wanganui East School, will be updating the site with our new discoveries. We would love your comments. Our blog is called Ruma Tekau Ma Rua Inquirers click here

The Waimarino ICT Cluster is made up of some schools in Tauranga. On Friday I presented 2 workshops at their Mini Conference. It was a really neat day. Mark Treadwell and Trevor Bond were the morning keynote speakers. Then there were 2 rounds of workshops in the afternoon and the day finished with the Sir Ken Robinson video.
So I got some PD myself as well as providing professional learning for others. What could be more perfect?
Mark's keynote was called 'School V 2.0'. It can be viewed on his website www.i-learnt.com
I jotted down some points of interest.

• The world of 21st Century learning will be online
• The importance of developing students' metacognition skills
  
• Parents having access online to what is happening at school. Sending a text message to parents everytime their child's digital portfolio changes
• Musac software (Student Manager) is now online and interoperable with KnowledgeNet
• Schools looking for contacts can be found at www.epals.com

Also at the ICT LTs workshop, Sarita showed us a neat site where Juniors can play online maths games. This is a UK website called Family Learning.  Click on 'Number Games' on the left navigation bar.

Our ICT Lead Teacher Big Day In was really fab. You are such a clever bunch! Could you all please post your blog address and write a sentence or 2 about how you will use the blog with your students? Thanks.

The sharing sessions were so interesting - Ele shared the Netsafe units of work (Hector the dolphin) http://www.hectorsworld.com/
Glen shared Point England School's podcats of book reviews http://www.ptengland.school.nz/ (click on Podcasts) Sue shared a plan for 'Put yourself in the Picture' and showed examples. (Hopefully she will add the plan to our Sharing page.) Paula shared a moving toy mechanisms website. We built a pest control machine! Wham! Julie shared a PowerPoint of students presenting their inquiry into keeping chickens at school as a way to be environmentally friendly.

During the afternoon Sue shared lots of info about RSS feeds - the what, why and how. We used Google Reader and explored some feeds she'd already set up. Sue has also found a New Zealand website with real-time monitoring which your class could RSS if you were studying NZ natural disasters. Check it out.

Feel free to add some random comments - they don't need to be deep and meaningful!  What's worked well in your classroom?  What hasn't?  Have you found any good resources?  Any hot tips?  Promote your school website or your class blog.  You don't need to belong to the Wanganui ICT Cluster.  Many, many millions of people all over the world are enjoying interacting with the Internet - you will too!